Blue passports, really? Sigh.

The way that the gutter press try to manipulate the real world sometimes makes me very cross.

Take passports for example, certain sections of the press and politicians have been making an enormous song and dance about the colour of the cover on British passports and have consistently blamed the EU for the change from navy blue to burgundy. This is of course in line with their general antagonism about the EU and their vehement attacks on anyone who suggest that leaving the EU is not a good idea.

Lets get one thing straight here: the referendum result which led to starting the process of leaving Europe is firstly, not democratic and secondly, about the worst decision that the UK government have ever made and will inevitably lead to a decline in the British economy.

Anyway, back to passports: one of the things that the likes of the Sun or the Daily Fail neglect to mention, for some reason, is that the colour of the passport is not set by the EU – shock horror! In fact the colour can be chosen by the country concerned -almost all European passports are the same burgundy but there is no directive which says that they have to be that colour; Croatia’s for example, are blue. As it happens, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the ISO issues standards for passport design, and they don’t stipulate a colour.

You know, there are many more important issues relating to Brexit that could do with some sensible discussion in the press, but let’s face it, large parts of the mainstream media care far more about profits than they do about accurate and sensible reporting.

So all the squealing about EU overreach and the recent political posturing by Theresa May with her press release on how British passports will change colour on leaving the EU is, like much of the rest of the shouting by Brexiteers, based on lies.